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Grandparents raising their grandchildren

A growing number of Canadian grandparents are caregivers of their grandchildren. And most of these caregivers are single females with limited incomes.

Margaret Claus, 77, embraces her 10-year-old great-granddaughter, Ellie, at this year's Cangrands summer conference and camp in Ameliasburgh, Ont. Margaret has been raising Ellie since she was born and adopted her at age 2. They live in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. "It's challenging trying to do the things of a 30-year-old when I'm nearly 80," says Margaret. However, she finds that there are many rewards. In addition to general life skills, Margaret is passing along an awareness of and respect for their shared Mohawk heritage, which was not part of Margaret's upbringing in Hamilton. Both have been through Mohawk language immersion programs and Margaret hopes her great-granddaughter will continue learning her language. "She's doing something that I would have wanted to do. I have to live that part of my life through her." (Chloë Ellingson / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

At the Cangrands annual summer conference and camp in Ameliasburgh, Ont., Margaret Claus supervises water activities while Shirley Graham is presented with a clam by one of the four grandchildren she is raising. (Chloë Ellingson / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Betty Cornelius, with arms spread, greets a camper outside the dining hall at breakfast time at the Cangrands summer conference and camp. Cornelius is the founder of Cangrands and is known by many campers as "Grandma Betty." She raised her 20-year-old granddaughter, Asheleigh. (Chloë Ellingson / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Breakfast time at the Cangrands summer conference and camp. Thirty caregivers and 48 children attended this summer.. (Chloë Ellingson / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Carol Guitard is raising three grandchildren and enjoys going to the Cangrands conference and camp for the solitary moments it allows her. Guitard and her grandchildren have been going to the event for three years. "I don't get this very often," she says. "I'm just sitting, I don't even have my book." (Chloë Ellingson / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Dawn Williams, 60, embraces her grandson, who is having a tantrum. Williams lives in Belleville, Ont., and attends a monthly support group for grandparents raising grandchildren in the area. (Chloë Ellingson / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Donna Wood, 58, waits for her grandson, 8, to calm down after an argument. Wood has raised her two grandsons from birth at her home in the town of South Bruce Peninsula. (Chloë Ellingson / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Shirley Graham, 55, lives in Brampton with her husband and four grandchildren. "I could have resentment," she says, "but it's not what I can't do, it's what I can do. I can spend valuable time and I can make a difference with these kids." (Chloë Ellingson / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Tami Downes, right, and Dawn Williams, both from Belleville, Ont., and each raising one grandchild, chat while the kids play. Downes finds it difficult to find and maintain a romantic relationship as a grandparent caregiver. "I was in a relationship for about two years," she says, "and he gave it up because of my granddaugther. We're of an age where you're not supposed to be raising kids. They're supposed to be grown up, doing their own thing." Since then, Downes has tried online dating. "As soon as they find out that you have kids younger than about 18 years old, they're not interested in you," she says. "I would love to have someone to share with." (Chloë Ellingson / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Carolyn Ellis, 55, supervises as her step-niece, 10, jumps on the trampoline. Ellis has adopted both the 10-year-old and her sister, and both girls call her "Mom." (Chloë Ellingson / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

By Chloë EllingsonToronto Star

Sun., Aug. 3, 2014

Margaret Claus often has a child’s flower hair clip pinned to her silver hair or a homemade elastic bracelet around her wrist.

That’s because the 77-year-old widow has been raising her great-granddaughter, Ellie, since the child was born 10 years ago.

“We are so busy running with kids that we don’t have the chance to age,” says Claus of older people like her in split-generation families.

“I feel like I stopped aging when I got Ellie,” adds Claus, who lives in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, near Belleville, Ont., and who adopted her great-granddaughter when she was 2. “My body got older; my mind didn’t.”

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Claus is among the growing number of Canadian grandparents and great-grandparents raising their kids’ children or their grandchildren’s kids. According to Cangrands, a non-profit organization that provides support to “caregiver families,” some 62,500 children are being raised by kin in Canada, mainly a grandmother or aunt.

These custodians are disproportionately female, single, out of the workforce and aboriginal.

“You should be saving for retirement; instead, you’re spending your savings and it’s very hard to get back to work,” says University of Toronto social work professor Esme Fuller-Thomson. “People who are older and living on fixed incomes really have a hard time stretching to meet clothing and bigger accommodation issues like having a larger home, and child-care issues.”

Often, the kids come with major baggage. “Children have experienced a lot of difficulty before being placed with grandparents,” says Joy Goodman, a community mental health worker at Children’s Mental Health Services in Belleville who helped launch a support group for grandparents in her community.

There can be stigma for the caregivers, too. “You get that person saying, ‘Well, you didn’t do such a great job with that first one, what makes you think you’re going to do a better job with this little child?” says Georgie Thompson, 53, who is raising her 11-year-old step-granddaughter.

But children raised by grandparents tend to do better than those who end up in foster care, Fuller-Thomson observes. They are twice as likely to report good emotional health and half as likely to experience mental illness. “They’re just better equipped to cope with life,” she says.

Every summer, Cangrands organizes a summer conference and camp for grandparents raising their grandchildren and other split-generation families. This year it took place in Ameliasburgh in Ontario’s Prince Edward County.

Cangrands founder Betty Cornelius, 61, of Bancroft, Ont., was the driving force behind the camp. “I want better for my grandchild,” Cornelius says of her granddaughter, Asheleigh, now 20 and enrolled in justice studies at Durham College. “She’s an honours student and she’s out there working. I believe she’s healthier and can make healthier choices than the past generations. I believe the chain is broken.”

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